How to Get Five Star Rating For Your Mobile Apps?

As the world changes, consumers are getting smarter and more selective. The psychology of first impressions still prevails especially in the landscape of mobile apps. More influential than marketing stunts, app store ratings and reviews given by fellow users are something that drives discovery and conversion for an app.

Reviews are trusted more and ratings help evaluate the app quality and performance. Since users rely on app reviews heavily before downloading, ratings and reviews make your app more discoverable, successful and profitable. This is why it is important to learn how to get five star ratings for you mobile app.

Here are 8 great tips to secure five star ratings for your new or existing mobile app:

1. Integrate an automatic rating prompts

The idea of integrating rating prompts in your mobile app can make or break the customer retention. It has ability to either enhance customer experience or disturb users to the extent of quitting the app.

The right use of prompts can, however, keep the users alive and encourage them to boost your apps ratings.

Make sure:

Your prompts do not interrupt users’ ongoing in-app interactions

You incorporate their sentiments before soliciting reviews/ratings

You segment the customers and ask only those who love your app for reviews

Set proper intervals for rating prompt frequency

Run a survey to learn the points of improvement

Resolve the queries of unsatisfied customers

Use third party prompts if you don’t have your own

2. Analyse the pattern of customer behaviour

Using analytics helps you learn more about customers:

Behavioural pattern

Choices and tastes

Motives and intents

Age group and demographics

Expectations from your app

Areas of interest

Selling points

You can use the data gathered through analytics to make your in-app communications more personalized and efficacious.

You can use third party analytics or your own. Choose the platform based on the type of data you want to pull from customers.

Based on the data, you can build a strategy to trigger rating prompts for target audience.

3. Choose Proper Time to Deliver Rating Prompts

The key to your app’s five star ratings is also delivering rating prompts at the right moment. If you have mobile experience, you must know how right place, time and person make a huge difference.

Do’s:

Think of the precise moment to strike with a prompt

Wait until the customer is accustomed to your in-app environment

Prompt the request when he/she completes the task

Use pre-built standard dialogue for prompt messages OR

Use your own creativity to form a unique dialogue

Don’ts:

Ask to rate the app immediately after the user opens up the app

Prompt the customer while he is playing with your app features

Deliver the rating prompt before an action is completed

Not waiting for the right mobile moment to send the message

Always remember:

The most suitable time to prompt is after your customer has accomplished their task. They are ready to open up and share their experience in app store.

Create a unique prompt message to go with the app’s flow to offer intuitive experience.

Prefer to wait at least 5 days after your app is installed before sending a prompt to increase your chance of getting high rating and reduce app abandonment.

4. Make a Gentle and Creative Approach

Innovate your style in which you approach and ask your customers to rate your app. You can get a little personal and creative while asking a question. For example, “Do you love the experience in our app?” or, “Do you love what you see in this app?”

In case you want to draw feedback from them, you may try, “how do you find this app?” followed by answer choices such as “Good”, “Excellent”, “Average”, or “Could have been better.”

Such questions:

Drive segmentation of your customers

Determine who is likely to be your ‘fans’ and who will play ‘critic’

Encourage users to take action and respond

Trigger interactive conversation

Your app will have both:

Fans: People who love it and are likely to rate you high

Critics: People who are not happy and may seek an opportunity to leave negative feedback.

Always offer ‘thanks’ to customers for answering your question and their time. This gesture shows that your brand appreciates both positive and negative comments.

5. Follow the First Question with Careful Prompts

Now at this stage, you know the personal sentiment of your customers. Now you can guide certain segment of them to an app store for real reviews.

To go closer to 5-star ratings, do these:

You can expect customers who responded positively to your first question to leave a positive review. You can prompt them doubtlessly

Handle the customers with negative feedback carefully. Those who have responded negatively are prepared to rate you low. Direct them somewhere other than an app store for sharing their harsh feedback

To retain the high ratings, use rating prompt to lead unsatisfied customers to less harmful communication channel like the one you might have inside the app

Start working on their valuable feedback to improve weak points of your app they have experienced

Finally, after they have shared ratings, quickly take them back to where they paused in your app so that they can continue to explore more.

6. Your Communication Matters

Your customers can’t hear your tone as you deliver in-app messages. But they can surely judge the language you use especially while asking for ratings.

Make sure:

You are gentle, respectful and friendly

Your words are not demanding or intrusive

You are not much direct and abrupt

To keep it short, readable and sweet

You never forget your brand voice in all user engagements

Your communicational ability can influence your app store ratings. This is why it is pivotal to sophisticate your language when you reach out to them.

7. Be Patient and Understand User Psychology

In history, no empire is built overnight. Getting 5-star ratings requires some amount of patience after you start working on your strategy. Ratings build up gradually.

In mobile app store reviews, even a fraction of star counts. In a blog post by Mobincube, they have explained how an increase of just 0.1 (i.e. from 3.9 to 4.0) can make a huge impact on your app reputation and its earning.

This is the psychology of app users in modern times. Apps rated 4.1 are more downloaded than apps with 4.0 ratings. Hence, even a slight difference of score can increase or decrease the number of your app’s fans.

8. Manage a private channel for negative reviews

One clever way to keep your rating up is to, gather negative feedback and manage them privately. You will not get happy users all the time. But critical reviews can also help improve your app and offer you new ideas.

It is a good practice to have a separate in-app support channel for having private communication with users who have unpleasant complaints about your app.

This solution keeps their frustration away from the app store, leaving good reviews unaffected. You can think of Uservoice. If customers are happy with their support experience, they can bestow on you bright ratings.

Final note:

Ratings and reviews are the key to increase app visibility and for acquiring new customers. To many users, they are the best way to evaluate the quality of the app and some find it more credible than word of mouth recommendations. To draw more stars for your app, always practice offering pleasant user experience. Hopefully these tips will help bring you five stars and put you on top of the charts.